Smoking Lizard Media

© 2019 G.N. Jacobs

Inevitability and predictability rules the day on Facebook writers’ groups, especially when someone chooses to post a variation of – “help, I have a job/school/life, how do I find time to write?” Yet, another bucket of chum leading to a set of fairly predictable responses from the others in the group.

The choices: A) a recitation of past completed projects with the schedule adopted to make them happen, including getting up early, staying up late etc., B) modestly helpful advice like “write in short bursts stealing time from the slow moments between tasks that service the job/school/life,” C) a pious “if writing is important you make the time,” or from the Advanced Class, D) all of the above. I went with B.

We say these things because nothing pisses off a writer more than someone who’s all up in our writer grills wanting to write, but finds excuses not to. We know having been there spewing the same excuses that we’re lying with a side of hyperbole when we say “the thing wrote itself.” Only in the sense of employing a story structure and characters that makes the process of tapping keys actually fun. The writer still has to put words on the page no matter what and the Universe just won’t care if you don’t.

My version of B went like this – “steal your writing time from the hidden downtime at work because you’re just not productive every moment of a work day.” I asserted that most jobs have a rhythm and that the motivated writer finds those patterns to sneak in a few minutes at a time. I said this in addition to other similar advice from others about using up coffee and lunch breaks. You can, but if you don’t go out with work friends to a nice lunch on regular basis, you might miss out on the other eternal challenge writers face…having things to write about. A balancing act to be sure.

How does this work in practice? First off, let me say nothing here applies if your current job is at a McDonald’s or something. Fast food managers have a marked tendency to seek out malingering employees handing out mop buckets and instructions to change the liners in the trash cans at the slightest whim. An excellent reason when added to the wage scale to treat this kind of employment as either your first or last job. Use your breaks here and don’t screw around with Hell Boss.

But, for most of the rest of us that want to write it does make sense to ask “how much otherwise wasted time at work can be employed by me to get in writing time?” If a lawyer still gets paid by the billable hour waiting by the phone for clients to respond and isn’t expected to help the first years and paralegals do research, how much of that downtime should that lawyer steal putting down words for Alita Anderson, Monster Rights Litigator? Hopefully, that lawyer answers with “as much as I thought prudent at the time.” Certainly said writer will avoid snark from other writers.

Now, I’m not going to pretend I know very much about law offices other than what the TV presents by way of L.A. Law, The Guardian, The Good Wife and the spin-off The Good Fight. Just because I assert that there is quite a bit of downtime between tasks that serve the firm and the billable hours doesn’t mean you don’t have to discover these things for yourself. So let’s talk about the one job I do know something about that has tons of downtime: delivery/Uber/driving.

Speaking with only some hyperbole, I have to the eternal regret of my insurance carriers ended three delivery jobs with the accident that wiped out my car. The latest one about 16 years ago ended with an airbag detonation. The job lasted three years.

During that time, I waited at centrally located gas stations and later on at home as I got slightly arrogant at my job only to be slapped around by the dispatcher on the subject at least once. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Eating a donut. Waiting. And then the company cell phone with a built-in push to talk feature squawked and off I went to deliver stuff, sometimes to people whose names you’d recognize.

You’ll notice I put in about four repetitions of waiting. The writer I am today would absolutely not only bring the notebook that I have carried with me since college, but actually write in it too. As I remember that time, I wrote at least one horrible screenplay and started four others. But, I know I could’ve done more, so I really do get to lean in on some other writer with the “it must not be important to you if you don’t write” head trip.

That time also passed with journalism classes at night that required words on the page, so it wasn’t a total drought. But, I didn’t write as often in the car during downtime preferring to write at home after work as the older me wishes. But, I could have, that’s my point for this article. You’re not always on the clock and when you are you have dead moments where you can steal a paragraph or two. And you always have breaks, if used judiciously to balance the social elements of the day job with getting things done.

I have been on all sides of the chummed water created by this type of post. The been there done that old-timer. And the scared neophyte that didn’t mention a true case of Writers Block knowing the response would be “boo boo, it happens to everyone and maybe if you forced yourself to write even if it’s crap you might find the block ends when you aren’t looking.” And thanks to other things going good with my finances I get to be the “Ducky, I’m just a full time(ish) writer now.” Which means I have even fewer excuses now. We all have more time than we think.

© 2019 G.N. Jacobs

Writers aren’t doing their jobs correctly if they don’t collect huge sock drawers worth of stuff: pens, pencils, stencils and…fill in the blank. Sometimes we buy the swag. Sometimes relatives doing the best they can give us all kinds of interesting stuff for Christmas. Duh-duh-duh, *Law & Order voice* – “these are some of my choices.”

A good way to evaluate what to buy is probably why to buy. I pretty much need three writing tools, not counting my previous bloviating about the tool named Apple Pen (see post). I need a black (or blue if I have to) pen. I need a Red Pen of Editorial Doom (lurking in the swirling fog, I swear). I need a pencil.

Pencils first. One part of my collection is driven by things I think I want to do and haven’t fully expressed because the next 1,000 words grabbed me by the short and curlies. So thinking I’ll draw stuff (you can stop laughing now), I buy things like stencils and How to Draw books…and pencils. Color, check. Green and yellow Dixon-Ticonderogas, check. And quite a few .5mm and .7mm nib mechanicals, eventually settling on the cheap disposables…until recently, also check.

The Dixon-Ticos, I don’t use much largely because we all have those test taking nightmares decades after leaving school. I suppose if you don’t mind grinding off the wood to sharpen the graphite, go for it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The color pencils also sit in my desk. If you don’t draw like you thought you would you, don’t need to color either. At least, I don’t have to replace them or add to the collection.

Mechanical pencils have pretty much pissed me off in almost every case. The non-disposable ones sometimes get nasty when you try to replace the graphite in the barrel. Are you supposed to shake the thing loading from the opened back? Or do you do the catheter type insertion (Ow!) from the front?

But, the most annoying thing about many mechanical pencils has been the ease with which the writer cracks the lead bearing down on the page. Scratch some words of great import and – SNAP! Plunge more lead out; write three more words and – SNAP! The disposables bought so you can cease to care about both the loading issue and cracking the lead are actually worse enough that you still throw the pencil across the room.

A word about usage. I might not draw like I thought, but I do have slightly more believable pretensions towards composing music. An art form where erasing that stubborn quarter note off the page lends itself to the eraser that comes with the pencil. But, years and years of just putting a line through wrong words written in my notebooks have trained me to just write with a pen saying, “cross-outs are part of the process.”

My artist friends went on and on about their pencils, specifically mechanicals made by RoTring. Knowing that my stalled music will need at least one limited duty tool, I take what I hope is my last venture into Pencil-Land. It’s an expensive object ($20 give or take on Amazon), but maybe that’s the point, that you get what you pay for.

I’ve had mine in .5mm (you’ll see a personal preference for fine nibs across the board) for a few weeks now. I have yet to attempt a reloading, but using the pencil to deliver notes on screenplays for no other reason than Just Because, I’ve gotten a generally smooth flow of words where nothing catches on the page.

Part of that smoothness must come from the fact that driven by wanting to save my elbow as long as possible, I put grips on everything or buy wide barreled tools (see picture). The makers hit on a hexagonal barrel to keep the pencil from rolling on a drawing board, but it’s still a thin object.

I wanted to say that I’ve found the lead unbreakable. In my hands, I haven’t cracked the lead, yet. But, I lent the pencil to a friend and he cracked the lead. Did I magically learn the technique that prevents this? Don’t know. A good to great tool in a field of poor to mediocre competitors.

Pens. The variety here is endless. Among writers you’ll get all kinds of tribalism as to the – Best. Pen. Ever. Worse than Star Trek v. Star Wars nerd wars. Fountain pens. No information. Don’t use them. Don’t do calligraphy and my signature comes out the way it comes out using a ballpoint or gel pen.

Ballpoint pens. I’ve long since abandoned most of the disposables in the ballpoint field. Usually, it’s the thin barrel on those ubiquitous Bics and Papermates that we used in school once we finished those dreaded pencil-driven Scantron tests. And few of these pens come in the .5mm nib that I like.

For a long while, I would compulsively buy packs and packs of Pilot G2 (see picture) pens that kind of count as sort of disposable even though you can unscrew the tops and put in new cartridges. The grip is a good idea, but now contemplating them after many months not using them even these stalwarts might be too thin for someone totally paranoid about his elbow.

What I don’t remember using these many pens lurking in the bottom of the drawer is how long the cartridges last. I kept switching out pens for one exactly like it and never really paid attention to when the reservoir dried up. I do remember that I liked the feel. The nib didn’t catch and I didn’t have cause to complain.

I have so many pens in my desk drawer in part because I learned the get what you pay for lesson in ballpoints, a while ago. My sister gave me a Cross ballpoint pen (see pictures) maybe ten, twelve years ago for my birthday. I lost it. Promptly bought another one that looked exactly like it, so I didn’t have to face explaining the loss to her. And then found the first pen.

This started an obsession with Cross ballpoint pens. I have about eight, I think. They all look different, but are mechanically the same inside…twist left to reveal the nib. I buy the thick barreled ones for the same reasons I humorously put grips on everything else…my elbow. I did try a few of the thin barreled examples (Ow!) and left them in my desk, except the one that has a touchscreen stylus. I keep that one as the ink cartridge I cannibalize into other pens first when I run dry.

I would give these pens medium to good marks writing across the page in terms of smoothness and not catching. But, the real draw to these expensive (a range of $12-$35) tools seems to be the ink cartridge, especially in black. The ink paste can dry out requiring a test swipe outside the writing area to prime the ball. Once you do, the pen seems to go forever, until it doesn’t and I change it out for the one in the stylus pen.

I’ve written at least two and a half years or more of journals with these tools. I stopped counting how many half and three quarter filled spiral notebooks I’ve chewed up with these Cross ballpoint pens. I use them a lot…Nuff said. And what happened to those first two pens? Ironically, each pen developed quirks where one part would slip free despite supposed to grip tight, so I cannibalized both pens to make one pen that gripped the parts correctly. Another pen used to be blue, but the lacquer wore off and now is brass. I’ve also blocked out one pen to handle my rare Red Pen of Editorial Doom needs, though I’m less sold on Cross’ red cartridges.

You’d think I’d quit; I have my pen. But, helpful relatives will still give you stuff and you still have to look like you appreciate the gift. The most recent one, my brother gives me a pack of Tul gel pens (see picture). He swears that all of his friends and associates tend to sticky finger these into pockets and he can’t keep enough of them on his desk. Okay, give me a couple weeks, I’ll let you know.

I hadn’t really ever done gel pens in my writing past. The closest I’ve come are an equally expensive flirtation with various disposable rollerball pens that use the same general type of ink, but run it through a ballpoint nib. Gel and rollerball ink comes out wet so you can sometimes smudge the words. I get started adding grips to the barrel and…

I see why my brother and his friends like these Tul pens so much. Smooth writing made smoother with my grips. A smudge or two when my fingers get too close before the words dry. I grind out a lot of pages using nothing else. I discover exactly how long it takes for one pen, designed like a marker, to run dry…six weeks give or take.

I have to take a couple points away from this worthy pen because to look good in the hand they made the plastic barrel opaque. You have to look closely at the strip in the middle to see how much ink you have. Of course the words I wrote gave me fair warning becoming progressively thin, but I’m hyper-focused on a word spree. I didn’t notice until the ink went bone dry and I switched out for the second one.

By no means is this an exhaustive list of the pens available to you, just what I use the most. Writers who get paid will free fall into the Consumer Reports article, about every 18 months or so. So with that the post is over. Go home!

A vampire? You decide kids…

© 2019 G.N. Jacobs

Concerning Facebook, I seem to have quite a few Pacino moments – “every time I get out, they pull me back in!” The latest came in the form of a writer posting about wanting to write a vampire story and being stuck because of how large Twilight looms in our recent consciousness. My advice, I gave two variations of the same suggestion; develop a story independently of the vampire and then add it back in later.

My assertion backing up this advice: a vampire story is first and foremost a story that can be read and understood even without the bloodsucking. Yes, changes will occur the minute Elisabeth Bathory bathes in young virgin blood, but they will be minor compared to the core story. And, yes, I just validated all the writing manuals rooted in the Hero’s Journey, even the ones I barely tolerate. Part of the reason you can do things this way, a vampire used to be human, speaks dramatic dialogue and wants something he/she isn’t getting…a character, the same rules apply.

Let’s leave aside that the poster rolled over and splattered chum for a certain type of commenter waiting to pounce with variations of “read other vampire stories like Dracula,” or “simply do the opposite of Twilight.” Okay, read or at least see the movie is sort of helpful in the case of the Bram Stoker. Do the opposite of Twilight is less so, but I digress.

Okay, so the dark and lush tale of Vlad the Impaler all vamped out in his spooky castle high in the Wallachian mountains gets to be my first example. What is the story told without a single fang, bloody neck or bat framed by the full moon? It’s a creepy, obsessive love triangle turned ugly and stalker-iffic.

Mina Harker nee Murray travels with her husband Johnathan Harker in the Romanian backcountry that used to be called Wallachia. The dark roads and local superstitions serve to portend a dark but ultimately transformative narrative. Mister Harker intends to help a mysterious and reclusive count with estate matters. Despite the misgivings of the neighbors in the village at the bottom of the hill the couple contrives to spend the night at Castle Dracula.

The count becomes enamored of the young Mina recognizing qualities of his long dead wife. The initial stay becomes a highly charged knife dance for Mina’s hand. The count’s female hangers on or ex-wives move in on Mr. Harker as distraction. The count has limited success that goes as forward progress. The visit ends.

The count packs up his roadshow with his faithful servant and follows Mina to London to continue the pursuit. Mina’s best friend, Lucy dies at the hand of the count. Mina and Jonathan with the help of a knowledgeable expert turn the tables and track her stalker back to his home in Romania for a fateful conclusion where Mina chooses the man she wants.

Could you tell this story without anything vampiric? Yes. Abraham van Helsing becomes more of an alienist advising Mina on the ins and outs of obsession and the dark sexual urges popularized in the recent work of Sigmund Freud. Maybe you drop the character altogether. But, people actually using their library cards and streaming accounts would immediately go – “this sort seems like that Dracula movie.”

Are there other stories possible in the vampire genre that don’t get underfoot with Twilight? Yes. One of my personal favorites that I 80-percent guarantee you haven’t seen Razor Blade Smile has another take. The story of a female vampire assassin on a multi-decade mission to hunt down the members of a small offshoot of the Illuminati bent on word domination.

Okay, the actress is pretty, gets naked and spews all the pseudo-Cockney attitude of a character likely to show up in a Guy Ritchie film, but pay attention to the twist. The leader of the Illuminati group turns out to be the vampiress’ equally vampiric lover. All the humans killed in the middle were just callous sacrifices to the fact that living for centuries has a way of ruining the fun of sex. Violent role playing prior to renewing vows with monster sex.

If you aren’t thinking – “wow, are there ways to tell that story about a human billionaire and his bored wife setting in motion a violent set of events designed to renew their spark?” – you aren’t paying attention. Maybe the plot of Fifty Shades of Grey Part Five: Fifteen Years Later? Please, anyone? I can dream.

What was my actual advice? I used up a lot of paragraphs saying this writer should put aside the vampire for the moment and come up with a character that wants things from other characters likely to be resisted by the other characters…drama. The writer stays away from the vampire just long enough to figure out the story between all these characters writing either a non-bloodsucker trash draft or a serious outline. And then adds the vampire back in later.

Like the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich thought experiment to teach people to give precise directions, I said something that wasn’t fully explained in the previous sentence. I said they should read the trash draft or outline and decide who in that proto-story acted most like the vampires they wanted to present; that character is the vampire and everyone else are the humans.

What I didn’t say is that I felt sure that this writer waking up one day saying, “I’m going to write a vampire novel” would have their subconscious mind do the heavy lifting guiding one or more characters towards behaviors easily switched out for a vampire later in the process. My bad, even when we give incomplete directions the world still lands on edible PBJ sandwiches…most of the time.

Even reading this suggestion back I’m a little bored so let’s go nuts with my second suggestion to do the same thing, develop a story that can then be adjusted to vampires later. My second simpler suggestion, pick a story that doesn’t have vampires and rewrite it so that it does. Pay attention, this is where writers of posts like me expose our favorite books; I used Three Musketeers as one example.

Which of the many rich characters in Alexandre Dumas’ classic would most likely be revealed as a bloodsucker? And depending on the choices how does it change the story? Do we go with Milady De Winter, famously played by Faye Dunaway the only time I could stand watching the movie? Do we go with Cardinal Richelieu? Athos? Porthos? Aramis? Le Comte de Rochefort? Or even D’Artagnan?

Considering that Dumas sneaked two books into one serialized narrative we have choices. The first part, The Queen’s Diamonds, shows young D’Artagnan arriving in Paris with his father’s sword to make his way as a musketeer. The Gascon quickly makes friends with the three friends, falls in love with the Queen’s trusted handmaiden, Constance, and saves the Queen from the political and personal consequences of a rashly thought out affair.

The second section, Milady’s Revenge, starts two or three days later and Milady De Winter simply wants to wipe out D’Artagnan by all means expedient. Cardinal Richelieu lets out a big sigh and writes her a warrant making the impending violence legal, largely because the lady is good for all kinds of dirty deeds done dirt cheap. People die.

The cardinal revealed as the vampire in the new version turns the story into a metaphor about great players divorced from the rest of humanity by their position and perspective, or more than is already on the page. As always, I have few opinions about pitches until I see something on the page, but the great Christopher Lee (Rochefort in the Salkind production) did once quit playing Dracula in the Hammer movies when he saw a script where the vampire pretty much had become Dr. No. But, hey, good writing saves many silly pitches, we’ll see.

For those of us that paid attention reading the book, Milady De Winter is so obvious a choice to be nominated the vampire. Especially in the later revenge chapters she tries everything, poison, seduction, threats to Constance and hired assassins just to wipe out the uppity Gascon and his annoying musketeer friends. She will not lose.

The later chapters are already an awesome cat fight between women tied up too tight in whalebone corsets with D’Artagnan caught in the middle. Milady also needing to drink Constance’s blood? Wow! I’ll skip the other possibilities for space and repetitiveness and trust the reader will spark their own story engines.

Cool! I busted out 1,500 words suggesting a good way to get past this scene where a writer grips their head, “Twilight is such a huge thing that I don’t know what to do!” Develop a story that works without vampires and see where that takes you. It may help and sure is more constructive than the many repetitions of, “do the exact opposite of Twilight,” or “vampires don’t sparkle ever” in the feed. Though the people saying to read a wider set of vampire stories for ideas, I think are trying to get to the same place as me in fewer sentences.

With that this post is over, go home! Carry garlic with you…

© 2018 G.N. Jacobs

It’s amazing how much weird writer/musician/creator stuff lands on me through my Facebook feed. Just have to have that programmable music box, where I’ll likely be the weirdo composer writing for harmonica and said music box? Facebook. That amazing inconvenient ReMarkable digital writing tablet (see post)? Facebook. And don’t get me started on several links promising to make me a better writer, yet again…Facebook. And then there was the link to I Write Like [dot] com.

A simple promise…insert quite a bit of text in the box and they’ll tell me the published writer with an actual career or legendary deceased status that my writing most matches. Oh, wow…yet another bit of catnip for me to while away the two minutes this app takes out of my not actually writing time! Sign me up.

Long story short, I came up Cory Doctorow. And just because I’ve been around enough Internet oddities, like Facebook’s algorithm and everyone’s love/hate with the same, I’m going to run these things twice. Hell, I’m even going to do the old fashioned thing and click through from my Google prompt, just in case, and use different blocks of prose. Still, Cory Doctorow.

I’ve never read Mr. Doctorow, whom, until I looked him up on Wikipedia, I’d assumed was related to the other Mr. Doctorow, E.L. Doctorow. Apparently, Doctorow is as common as Smith in some parts of the world. Learn something new everyday from Wikipedia (except when Wiki is wrong). Full disclosure, I at least have a couple old paperbacks written by E.L. Doctorow, deemed absolutely irrelevant to this story, on my cluttered bookshelves. And you’ll understand why I’ve yet to read him too…as in have you seen my personal library?

Intrigued by the result of Cory Doctorow, I did quickly download the ePub/Kindle files for one of his books. As of this writing, it’s still unread and driven by whatever personal deadlines I put on me for this site; I just went ahead with this post. I figured I’d just talk about what I perceive about my own style (assuming you can trust me to see without blinders).

But, I did pay attention to a few tidbits in Mr. Doctorow’s biography as reported on Wikipedia and Amazon, just in case there’s is something to the theory that certain aspects of writing style related to similarities in background. We are both more or less from the Gen X cohort and his extensive publishing record is that of someone who didn’t self-diagnose as an ADHD poster child.

He writes about technology and related issues with far more expertise than me. I just break machines and software and write about the experience with an eye towards letting people know how the tech actually makes the user’s life and productivity better. In this vein, despite being asked over the years to plug the right cables into the TV or the stereo system by even less technically proficient family members, I’ve always seen myself as a technological chimpanzee.

I pound keys until I make it work and learn in the process. And you better believe there’s a direct reference to the famous thought experiment of infinite chimpanzees with infinite typewriters eventually producing War & Peace. I am a smarty pants which shows up in odd ways.

The most interesting similarity, sort of, between Mr. Doctorow and me is in our feelings about copyrights. He very much believes that current copyright law and procedure are slightly restrictive to how things work in the new digital economy and should be adjusted accordingly. For my part, when it comes to my words no way am I nearly as progressive; I write a book, no way do I not fight for that copyright under the current law throwing the kind of elbows to make your grandchildren feel it.

However, I have said this, “if there were some way to ensure the musicians and composers still got paid fairly, I would advocate for rules that only apply to music that acknowledge the largely derivative nature of the art form.” This is simply because we live in a musical universe where the drinking song To Anacreon in Heaven becomes the setting for The Star Spangled Banner. Or John Brown’s Body becomes The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Or that We’re Not Going to Take It Anymore and Oh, Come All Ye Faithful share the same tune. And let’s not forget that pretty much every third title in the Classical database is “Variations on a Theme by…” But, of course, more on these subjects to come later…in my composing column.

So anyway, I’ve listed some basic however tenuous similarities between Mr. Doctorow and myself. It will fall to someone else who has actually built an academic career analyzing the interplay between the background and life arc of the writer and the style of how those words appear on the page to say more. I just write, Man. And dark ugly truth, I hoped for Alexandre Dumas as translated into English. Pipe dream there.

And so now we have the artless segue to what I perceive about my own style versus Mr. Doctorow, so that when we collectively put my books side by side we’ll see if this site’s algorithm knows its stuff.

First off, I try to avoid To Be sentences which might be the first indicator that I have approximately three minutes of journalism training including reading Shrunk & White’s Elements of Style. I will assume that Mr. Doctorow with his considerably more than three minutes journalism training and work experience was taught to write more or less the same way. We’ll see when I quiet the noise monster that sometimes keeps me from reading, instead of writing, and I block out the time for his book. Score one for common training methods creating a common style instead of any high-falutin’ psychological analysis.

I shoot for paragraphs of three to five sentences of maybe twenty-five words each anchored by an active verb. Again, see the bit above about which books I read and classes I’ve taken for why my style looks the way it does. But, I also drop in sentences with a single digit number of words where I’ve semi-consciously dropped out the To Be construction. My memory of the millions of words written to date says this is a direct consequence of several journalism classes, mixed with just sitting down to do my words.

If you put the points of the preceding paragraphs together, you’ll understand why me writing like Alexandre Dumas defines pipe dream for the next three centuries. In the 19th Century the writing ethic of short sentences had yet to take hold. And then you have to figure that Dumas wrote in the French of the time and that I would be taking style cues from one of many translators, not exactly the same thing. I must just love any story with swords and has a cool bunch of friendship, the kind that start with a fistfight.

Getting back to my style, it’s pretty clear that I break my own rules when I feel I need to. I have a bunch of and so, first off and other transitional indicators in this very post. And other times I strangle these quirks in their crib when I edit. I love me my ellipses and M-dashes. I probably continually give Mr. Blatz (the good English teacher of my past seen through rose colored glasses) conniptions concerning my fluid usage of commas, until I get to edit the damn thing.

A style has more to it than than sentence structure. Choice in content also applies. I write oddball stuff with an occasional hint of black humor. Comes from being the kid that read the Bible cover to cover by the time I was fifteen. Pretty much, I have Greco-Roman mythology backwards and forwards and do okay with the Norse. I read Shakespeare because I can having flushed how certain bad teachers tried to kill the Bard for me.

I seem go for a small handful of basic character types. Sometimes I’m just knowingly doing Bilbo Baggins, the stalwart fellow of good cheer launched into a great quest by external forces. Other times, I’ll do an empire building story where a kinder gentler version of Julius Caesar builds a unified society and then prevents it from degenerating into tyranny. I also greatly respect journalists and certain kinds of lawyers more than even Shakespeare says I should. And sometimes, I’m just doing an off-kilter version of myself acting out my fantasies of any of the above. Lastly, all of my characters are either huge music fans and/or play instruments as is my current aspiration, loving it LOUD.

Presumably, these points will be where Mr. Doctorow and I will diverge the most in the side-by-side analysis. It was fun to learn these things even if the egotistical part of me wants to get into the database so that people will one day write like G.N. Jacobs. Don’t worry, there are pills for that. So with that…get back to your own writing!

© 2018 G.N. Jacobs

“Every time I get out, they pull me back in!”

With apologies to Michael Corleone, what pulls me back in are certain comic book and pulp characters that still circle like buzzards over a carcass in the desert. Specifically, Batman…and now at the risk of sounding like a Big Two Editorial Department famous for – “reversing a reversal that had already been reversed” – I’m back in Gotham, my version at least.

When I last swore off comic books characters moved over to fan fiction to get the story out of my head while waiting for my ship to come in, I was trying to force Wonder Woman into a marriage with Batman where she then takes over Wayne Enterprises. In previous posts, I covered the fact of a mild feminist objection to Wonder Woman, of all fictional strong women, marrying into her brass ring and then winning knife fights in the boardroom. Really, I also created the far more lethal failure of imagination as to why the story involved either Batman or Wonder Woman when nothing about the story as it fleshed out needed anyone in a Four-Color Spandex suit.

So what changed? Well, after a year of buildup, Catwoman recently backed out of marrying Batman citing that the Bat’s ongoing existential unrequited rage over being an orphan was necessary for his role as Gotham’s protector. Essentially, allowing Bruce Wayne to have his pain scab over and finding a small bit of happiness positively scared the shit out of DC’s Editorial Department. Many fans, tired of dredging up version after version of the alley mugging behind or near the Monarch Theater, blew up online.

This conflict expresses divergent views about what the Batman fandom wants from the character. Do we stall Bruce Wayne/Batman’s character arc in the metaphorical second act where he remains the tireless force of justice for Gotham City and will never permanently land on any woman, let alone Catwoman (his soulmate, hands down accept no substitutes)? Or could the writers make a case for scabs forming and the momentum of years of being the Bat keeps driving him forward? I’m in the let him get married and explore the relationship camp whenever this subject comes up at the comic book store.

Official Batman hasn’t helped much deciding between the two extremes of his character arc. Batman goes dark and grim. Batman lightens up, possibly as a result of the Kefauver-Wurtham Hearings that killed the Golden Age. Batman goes dark and grim, again. Batman has yet to lighten up a second time.

Where the average fan falls on this spectrum probably says a lot about how old they are and what their version is. A devoted fan of Adam West Batman can appreciate Michael Keaton Batman or Kevin Conroy Animated Batman, but still loves Adam West. Fans of other Batmen will usually say nice things about Adam West, sometimes with a believable straight face.

It matters because the Adam West show is the ultimate expression of Batman who seems to act like emotional scabs have formed and he’s just getting on with things as a detective and unofficial reserve officer of the Gotham Police Department. Yes, he’s a billionaire playboy with the ladies mostly as protective cover for his secret identity (a feature of all versions of the character), but he doesn’t wallow in the pain over the mugging that made him.

Adam West Batman cracks jokes – “Commissioner, one of them would be after Gotham. Two would be after regional power. Three of them and they want America. But, all four of them could only be after the world itself.” Or “Admiral, you sold off a submarine and you didn’t even get a drivers license.” Adam West Batman also parked in the Batmobile with Catwoman and danced the Batusi having great moments with all three actresses playing the Cat.

Many other versions of Batman have made use of movies having looser rules because the ratings system can replace the network Standards & Practices Department. This style of Batman wallows in showing the murder of the Waynes in the first movie in the series. Batman growls “I’m Batman” when trying to intimidate bad guys. And the Bat never seems to crack a smile.

The few examples of movies that played against this trope were so uniformly bad in failing to understand that a lighter Batman doesn’t have to mean an unreservedly stupid Batman that the suits that decide these things must be scared of taking their hands off the pendulum. Everyone loved Michael Keaton Batman, but divided on Christian Bale Batman between “good for the prevailing style” and “fuck you, Man, take a throat lozenge!”

So it is this larger context that guides my rumination about my current trip to Gotham to report the story. My list of needs, stories I can toss off for free to help drive eyeballs to this site. A concern that putting original work up on my site and my Wattpad mirror page damages the ability to publish that work for money later. I really want to see the Bat and Cat as a couple. And nothing about Batman is going to let me get out clean, like Michael Corleone.

Even still I had to wake up one night recently with the idea that I can’t explain beyond I get cool ideas all the time and I write them down to get back to them eventually. I solved the is this really a spandex story question by simply pushing Bruce Wayne down a ski slope in Vermont where he promptly breaks his leg and he sends out telepresence robots to control Gotham. I solved the let him be happy question by assuming that Catwoman had other reasons to break off the wedding the first time and simply comes home to take care of her man like Grace Kelly did for Jimmy Stewart.

And I continue to assert jettisoning Wonder Woman out of the story cycle works narrative miracles. Catwoman is a jewel thief and there’s no way she stops…completely. I see her as breaking into places with jewels she wants only to take selfies wearing the rock before putting it back. Batman gets his revenge by making her write the security report. Basically, Batman told in the style of a Tracy-Hepburn movie. Why not, can we not have some fun in Gotham?

However, there is another hidden purpose to putting Batman in the same house as a strong committed woman whether Catwoman or Wonder Woman (if absolutely necessary). Some people question Batman at a philosophical level that expresses discomfort with Gotham needing such a damaged billionaire to dress up in vampire fetish gear to break criminals’ and other poor people’s arms. I won’t go so far, but I have observed that speaking charitably Batman might be what Gotham needs, but what has Bruce Wayne the billionaire playboy done for his city?

The easiest way to mine this discomfort with the prototype spandex vigilante is to throw him in with a woman who will force him to actually use his philanthropic foundations as more than cover for the Bat. Wonder Woman is an Amazon rooted in love; she could’ve pushed her husband into a soup kitchen. Catwoman would be better than this coming from Gotham’s worst neighborhoods and she’s known and cared for the Bat for far longer.

All of this wakes me up one night for Batman: First Person Bat. An excellent way to have fun while saying one or two things that matter. But, please don’t take this to mean everything is all worked out here in Gotham, I still need to figure out which of the many villains available across the DC mythology need to show up to ruin the Bat and Cat’s day. Villains are good.

But, then again maybe I simply wanted to make the picture of Batman in a cast flopped on his couch with TV remote learning yet again about “500 channels and nothing on.” Check back later if I stay with this story…